An Idea

I get a lot of ideas. Most of them are unworkable to say the least. Some of them might have a glimmer of something to them, but I can't imagine that there is anything there that warrants a lot of work by someone who actually can mold such rough, crude thinking into anything useful. Such is the plight of alleged "big picture" people like me, who don't brink to the table what a details person typically does. I bet that a details person could actually come up with the big picture as well.

I had one of my big picture ideas the other day. Even a details man probably could not make much of it, but that is not to say that no one could have made money from it. That's a separate matter. What I thought of was how there's such a thing as buttermilk bread. You can drink buttermilk, although I wouldn't recommend it. I did it once when I was a boy, and really though there was a chance that what I drank was spoiled. To this day I'm not sure.

Chekhov's Poseur

As I think I must have said before, irrepressible anger is by far my most reliable motivator in my writing endeavors. Things that make me laugh often fail in making me work, but fury always gets it done. Well, I am just livid at the moment about the way people will pretend to know things. Are you familiar with the concept of Chekhov's Gun? I've heard of it, and I can explain it. I will readily admit that I haven't read or seen performed a single one of Anton Chekhov's plays. I don't think I could even name one.

Do others admit the same? They do not. They don't claim to be authorities on Chekhov, the theatre or drama, but neither do they dispel the illusion that they are by just chancing the bring up some specific thing like that. I find that very distasteful. These people are the same that suddenly started peppering their conversations with the word 'Schadenfreude' as if they were students of the German language and not people who heard it on talk radio or one of the news networks.

An Idea

Something clever came to me while eating Cobb salad among friends yesterday evening. I think that this is perhaps the ideal situation in which to nurture and realize ideas. A more complete picture of the comings and goings of our founding fathers would likely reveal many evening meals at Philadelphia diners. It may well be the case that forensic tests would reveal trace amounts of bleu cheese dressing on the original documents which contributed to our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and early amendments.

In any case, as I said, I was gifted a similarly epiphanous moment yesterday. To preface this moment, I must say that the great power and impact of words cannot be denied. To say something is to set incredible forces of the universe, of the mind and of the heart into motion. History is peppered with the unthinkably severe consequences of words casually spoken offhand. I'm reminded of an incident of the ancient battlefield in which a misunderstanding based on the written word led to unintended bloodshed on a large scale.